PSY 3128 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Prospective Memory, National Enquirer, Spatial Navigation
5 Jun 2018
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Executive Functions & Aging
- Complex planning, goal-setting, strategizing, switching, inhibiting
- Dependent on the frontal lobe
- Are sometimes impaired in aging.
Executive functions and self-regulation skills are the mental processes that allow us to plan, focus attention, remember
instructions, and multitask. Ie. Inhibition control, memory, cognitive inhibition. These are impaired in addiction and
ADHD.
Tasks to Measure Executive Functions
Wisconsin Card Sorting Test: the individual must sort deck of cards into piles, cards can be sorted according to various
rules which the participant is unaware of, and the only feedback given is /right/ or /wrong/ by the administrator.
Executive functioning in this task is abstraction and strategizing, keeping tack of and use feedback to modify
performance, and the inhibition of old rule when switching tasks.
a. Hallmark/Canonical Executive Task: a standard and valid test.
b. Milner (1963): based on previous work with monkeys, he found that frontal lobe damaged patients
could only shift rules two or three times before they began to perseverate (stay locked into one rule).
Damage to other parts of the brain did not produce this effect.
Short Term Memory: holding information in mind and being able to rehearse it. This is relatively preserved in normal
aging.
Working Memory: holding information in mind and manipulating it (ie. Remembering a phone number backwards).
This declines in aging.
Working memory may be important for other cognitive demands and be involved in measures not necessarily for
memory – this threatens validity.
Because of working memory decline, older adults have particular trouble understanding the following tasks:
i. Garden-Path Sentence: grammatically correct sentence where the ending doesn’t make sense with the
introduction.
ii. Other long sentences with many clauses (ie. The boy who came close to meeting that famous tall man in
black at the small but busy record shop near downtown that day was full of surprises. (Was the day or
the boy full for surprises – it is the boy.)
iii. Working memory predicts sophistication of production. Kemper (1990) from Baddeley (1999) looked at
diaries by women who had settled Kansas. They tracked participants and coded the diaries, as they aged
diary sentences became shorter and simpler, substitution of pronouns for nouns decreased with age.
- Fits with a working memory change interpretation.
- Pronoun substitution errors
- You cannot hold as many ideas so you write shorter sentences to get ideas out
- Benefit: if you have people read excerpts who were blind to the age. When English writing
teachers rated how compelling the entries were, the older persons diary entries were more
compelling, creative, and interesting.
Types of Long Term Memory (LTM)
i. Implicit/non-declarative: unconscious memory.
a. Includes procedural memory: the steps in order to do something.
b. Priming: previous experience changes response without conscious awareness (relatively intact in
aging).
ii. Explicit/Declarative: conscious memory.
a. Episodic: personal events or episodes – relatively impaired in aging.
b. Semantic: facts, knowledge – relatively intact in aging.
Figure: long term memory can be divided into declarative memory and implicit memory. We can also distinguish
between two types of declarative memory, episodic, and semantic. There are a number of different types of implicit
memory. Two of the main types are repetition priming and procedural memory.
Long Term Episodic Memory Task
Study these words: harm, termite, master, direct.
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Executive functions and self-regulation skills are the mental processes that allow us to plan, focus attention, remember instructions, and multitask. Wisconsin card sorting test: the individual must sort deck of cards into piles, cards can be sorted according to various rules which the participant is unaware of, and the only feedback given is /right/ or /wrong/ by the administrator. Damage to other parts of the brain did not produce this effect. Short term memory: holding information in mind and being able to rehearse it. Working memory: holding information in mind and manipulating it (ie. remembering a phone number backwards). Working memory may be important for other cognitive demands and be involved in measures not necessarily for memory this threatens validity. Because of working memory decline, older adults have particular trouble understanding the following tasks: Garden-path sentence: grammatically correct sentence where the ending doesn"t make sense with the introduction.
